Just an observation — I’ve sent several PMs thru the new site, and havent gotten any responses…strange, I always got a response when using the old site, even the courtesy “its sold”. Just thought I’d pass that along, dont know if its a glitch or not.

Just an observation — I’ve sent several PMs thru the new site, and havent gotten any responses…strange, I always got a response when using the old site, even the courtesy “its sold”. Just thought I’d pass that along, dont know if its a glitch or not.

Hi Andy, You will see in the top menu next to your name a little quote logo. Anytime you have a response from a private message, you will see a number pop up. Make sure your profile has you receiving emails when you receive messages as well.

Dave – I consider you and Rob to be friends, but quite frankly the new form is CRAP, and people are voting with their keyboards. You have better numbers than I do, but I’m betting forum traffic is down by 90%. Forum traffic drives site traffic, and loosing that sort of site traffic is a disaster.

I just posted a classified to sell a kart and it was a disaster! It got so f-ed up that I gave up and re-submitted a new ad.

I’ve tried to give the new format a fair chance, but I’m very close to punting – and punting means I won’t be back.

It looks like Google has demoted these forums from it’s search listings, probably because of all the dead links. It used to be when I’d search google for something related to karting, in the first 10 results there were always a couple of links to EKN. Now there’s nothing.

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<div class=”d4p-bbp-quote-title”>Justin Mitchell wrote:</div>
It looks like Google has demoted these forums from it’s search listings, probably because of all the dead links. It used to be when I’d search google for something related to karting, in the first 10 results there were always a couple of links to EKN. Now there’s nothing.

Yeah, it’s a shame. One of the largest discussion repositories for karting, the largest in the US, a body of a decade of work has basically been nulled. Sure the content is there under eknclassic, but that’s not really the point.

I don’t understand why the old forums weren’t kept at the old URL and the new ones under a different one, be it a subdomain or subdirectory. I guess the designers had their reasons for setting up a separate domain (eknclassic).

Thanks Chris. The URLs used by the new site are different from the old format. so we didn’t pick up on this. That said, we’ve added the ‘New Topics’ link to the ‘Forums’ drop-down menu in the navigation bar, so reader can click there first, if desired.

Please send me your mailing address and I’ll make sure you get an EKN shirt for helping out with some great feedback. Much appreciated!

You can still access your old information on EKNClassic.com. The new Forum is just a building block for what we have in store for the future. Many new features to come with an open palate to work from.

I would like to provide some feedback that I hope will be considered constructive. And please pardon me if this is not in any way a revelation.

The old version of the site was a wealth of knowledge and information(just as the new one will be in time); and it still is, as EKNClassic. I personally came to understand essentially all that I know about karting as a result of both the active community within EKN as well as the historical records held within the site. However, I only ever came to know about EKN through my karting related queries in Google’s search engine. After registering and using the site I quickly learned that accessing tailored, older information was relatively difficult using the search tools native to the site. As a result of this, I reverted to using Google whenever I wanting to search for a specific question that was not current on the boards. And I can do that still, now that I know to add EKNClassic to my google searches. But that’s just the thing, I know that, strangers don’t know that. As a result of how Google determines is search results, crawling, indexing, and relevancy, it’s possible that changing the url for the old site prevents that invaluable information from being presented to karting newcomers who have no idea what ekn is.

I don’t offer this feedback with the presumption that I am educating you. To the contrary, I feel I am preaching to the choir. However, I did think it was at least possible that the way I consumed information from EKN, might be a bit foreign to a crowd that has been using it directly and exclusively for the better part of 10 years.

What does this mean? Well, if I am someone interested in the sport because I saw a video, a picture, or whatever and I have never heard of EKN, then I will turn to google for my queries. But if google doesn’t index eknclassic because no one uses it, then that wealth of information is almost worthless because it’s not performing its added (and arguably greater) utility as a draw for the site and the sport(not to mention the quality of information).

As an example I searched for probably the most overhashed topic on EKN (Stock moto vs ICC) and Google presented no results from EKNClassic. Previously, the results would have been dominated with various thread titles and excerpts, all with the url ekartingnews tacked on the end; with maybe 2 or 3 other sites in the results. Here is a hyperlink to that google example. You will see one link for the new site, and yes, eventually this new site will catch up. But by changing the url of the old site, people like me may not find the new one for quite some time.

I like the new site and support the change. I’m only mentioning this as something to be aware of (if you previously were not) and that if the consequences of changing the old site’s name was a necessity, it’s a shame that added utility is gone.

<div class=”d4p-bbp-quote-title”>Jerry Pretti wrote:</div>
A small suggestion: move or duplicate the “Mark All Topics as Read” button to the top of the page. I find it a real PITA to have to scroll to the bottom of the page to get to it. thanks…